Review

Author:

Philipp Sarasin

Universität Zürich

Abstract

Michel Foucault's lecture series Du gouvernement des vivants (1979–80) fulfils his 'shift' towards the late works focusing on the politics of the self. Whereas in the early 1970s, he has been asking the Nietzschean question of how something like 'the truth' came into being, he now turns to the ethics of 'truth', of 'telling the truth', and of being the 'subject of truth'. In a manner of farreaching revision, he not only substitutes 'knowledge' for 'truth', but also the notion of 'power' for 'government'. But as this paper argues, it is precisely this 'being governed by the truth' which, according to the late Foucault, enables the subject to resist power.